Mill Town Girl

by Audrey Reimann

  She could hear them downstairs, laughing and joking on Sundays. Roman Catholics! She didn’t think much of Church of England folk either; the folk who went to St Michael’s. They were nearly as bad as Roman Catholics with their pomp and show. At the chapel they didn’t go in for all that – all that parading, bobbing up and down, cross bearing and white-gowned choirboys.

  She was in the chapel choir. Nobody bent the knee at chapel. Everyone was as good as everyone else. God didn’t expect people to bow. There were no graven images to bow to in chapel. And St Michael’s church bells were always going. It was all right for them on the far side of the square but she had to shut her windows on Sunday mornings to keep the noise down.

  Mind, she was always having to shut her windows for one thing or another, flanked as she was by the shops. On her left as you looked at it from the front was the drysalter and chandlery run by the Carter family, and on the right was Potts Bros, high-class grocer. Between the two, Carrie thought, as she regarded the square, it was hard to say which was worse. Not that she went in for neighbouring.

  On Mondays and Tuesdays the kitchen window had to be kept shut when Frank Carter took delivery of paraffin and molasses and used his backyard to tip them into jars and bottles. She couldn’t abide the smell of that place. Still, it pleased her to think how Frank Carter wanted to buy the Temperance Hotel. He’d told her he was thinking of opening a chemist’s and pharmacy as well. He’d started making up his own medicines and was doing a good trade, but he could look elsewhere for more space. She wasn’t selling.

  Wednesdays were noisy and smelly, with the market stalls right up to her front door, as were Saturdays. On Thursdays and Fridays she had to keep the front windows closed when Potts Bros set their coffee roaster going. They had a big, red-painted iron furnace in the room next to her house and didn’t seem to mind folks looking in, for there was nothing up at the window. People stopped and watched Herbert Potts, red faced and half dressed, shovelling hot coals and roasting beans all day long, filling the square with throat-catching fumes. They had a big grinder in there – a noisy object – and always one of the assistants turning the handle.

  The Potts brothers wanted to buy her hotel as well. They wanted a bigger shop. They kept hinting that if ever she wanted to sell . . . They’d have to come down to earth; they’d been charging too much for everything when the war was on. And they hadn’t put their prices down since.

  Some people – people here in Macclesfield, people like the Potts brothers and the Carters – hadn’t done too badly out of the war if they’d money to offer for her hotel. She hadn’t done well. Lodgings before the war were fourteen shillings a week, now she could charge eighteen and six but she couldn’t always get the lodgers. It hadn’t been easy. But she’d managed. And she wouldn’t sell. Father had opened the Temperance Hotel. It had been a declaration of faith to her father; a Haven of Temperance and Sobriety he’d called it. He’d had a way with words.

  The square was deserted now. All the windows in the Temperance were open to let in the cooling, heather-scented breeze that was blowing off the hills and moor, billowing the net curtains gently into the rooms.

  Carrie left the window and crossed to her washstand. It had brass inlays on the legs. She liked nice furniture and had the best bits here in her room, where she could keep her eyes on them. By the other window, the one that looked over the yard, was her kidney-shaped dressing table. She’d had it done out in white cotton lawn with blue satin ribbons. She always kept something scented on it. Today a bowl of cabbage roses filled the attic with their sweet perfume.

  She unpinned and combed back her thick, red hair, pulling it hard, away from her face, twisting and turning it until the unruly, abundant mass was pinned into a severe, heavy knot at the back of her neck. She looked at herself in the oval mirror above the washstand as she fastened her mother-of-pearl side-combs against her temples. She was tall and full-figured; high cheekbones in a long face, too large a mouth, good white teeth and large, round, short-sighted eyes of deep sapphire blue.

  Sometimes, when she looked at herself, she was startled out of her wits by the expression and luminosity of those eyes. Then she would remember her father and the way he used to tell her that vanity was the deadliest sin of them all. ‘Pride and vanity’, he used to say, ‘go before a fall.’ So she had grown up wondering where pride ended and vanity began and not being sure if pride and self-respect weren’t two sides of the same coin.

  Anyway, it was safer to regard herself as plain – not to give herself airs; not to feel pride in hair that was blazing with colour and life – not to notice the milky whiteness of her unblemished skin. It was safer to put such vanities out of mind as unworthy of the god-fearing, purposeful woman her father had intended her to be; it was safer to think of herself as exceptionally plain.

  She did nothing on a Sunday but attend chapel morning and evening, and teach Sunday school in the afternoon. For the other six days she laboured, running the lodging-house. But six days shalt thou labour, the Bible said. It was the word of the Lord and she kept to it as her parents had done; the Ways of Righteousness, her father would have said.

  Father hadn’t allowed them even to speak of anything but religious matters on Sundays. He taught her to speak only of pure and simple things on Sundays but no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t control her thoughts, which strayed from the pure and simple.

  But she could never do as some did. She was upright. She had strong principles. And it was a constant reminder, living so near to Churchwallgate, of how low folks could sink. Just below her hotel, only a few yards from the respectability of the square, lived some of the poorest families in the town, in filthy conditions with filthy smells that made your stomach heave to walk by. They weren’t all like that. But it was hard for people like Mrs Gallimore who lived halfway down, on Churchwall Street. Mrs Gallimore was proud and clean. It was hard for her, trying to keep her house and family right when there were so many dirty folk around her.

  Carrie opened her bedroom door and looked down the landing. Where was Jane? After Sunday school she’d gone for a walk in the park and Carrie hadn’t heard her return. Perhaps she was downstairs talking to Mrs Bettley who came on Sundays to help the girl who did the bedrooms. Mrs Bettley put out a cold supper for the lodgers on Sundays for no cooking was done on the Day of Rest. It didn’t cost much extra and Mrs Bettley wasn’t Chapel so she could work.

  ‘I’m getting slack with our Jane,’ Carrie said to herself as she went back into the room for her hat and coat. ‘I should make her come to chapel with me. I think she only goes to Sunday school so she can go sauntering round West Park afterwards. She’s thirteen. It’s time she started to act like a young woman instead of going round with that crowd, parading round the bandstand in their Sunday best and leaving their elders’ sides to go wandering in the cemetery.’

  She’d better find out what Jane was up to. Jane ought to do nothing but Bible study on Sundays, as she herself had. Recently Jane had taken up drawing and painting, Danny Kennedy’s hobby. Drawing and painting was all right if you had a minute or two to spare on a weekday but Carrie was sure Father wouldn’t have approved of it on a Sunday and Mother would have agreed. Mother had been a saint.

  She pinned on a green straw hat that went with her summer coat. The coat was cut in a restrained style with black collar and lapels. It was long, down to her ankles. She didn’t like the new short skirts the younger ones were wearing. Her gloves were in the hallstand drawer, downstairs. Carrie dosed her door and went down.

  Maggie Bettley was in the hall. ‘The older one,’ Maggie jerked her head towards the parlour, ‘the big Irishman. He wants to see you.’

  ‘Is Jane back?’ Carrie asked sharply. She’d be late for chapel if she didn’t watch out.

  ‘Yes, Miss Shrigley. She’s having her tea in the dining room, with the lodgers.’

  ‘With the lodgers?’ Carrie’s voice went high.

  The sound of it had brought the old
er Kennedy to the parlour door.

  ‘May I speak to you, Miss Shrigley?’ he asked in his deep, lilting voice.

  ‘I can spare you a minute,’ Carrie answered. She turned to Mrs Bettley. ‘Tell our Jane to get her Bible study done after tea. I don’t want her sitting around with the lodgers.’

  Maggie scuttled back up the corridor to the kitchen. The hall was dark and Carrie caught her sleeve against an umbrella handle that one of the lodgers had left turned outwards She’d need to start wearing her glasses all the time.

  In the parlour, Patrick Kennedy stood by the fireplace in front of the painted fire-screen, his bold eyes trying to hold her gaze.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked. She’d not say any more about him singing in the square. It was himself he made look foolish. But his manner always made her feel uncomfortable, aware of herself. Her heartbeat seemed to step up whenever he came near. ‘Can’t it wait till tomorrow? It’s Sunday.’

  ‘It can. It can,’ he answered with a smile. He was a handsome man with dancing blue eyes; tall with brown, curling hair that was a bit too long. He was four years older than herself and about six years older than his brother, Danny.

  At this moment he had struck a devil-may-care pose, resting one large hand on the polished mantel. ‘I need some advice from a woman,’ he said. ‘It’s about the houses I’m building. I thought,’ – it sounded like ‘taut’ the way he said it – ‘I thought that I’d design the kitchens to suit the ladies.’

  ‘All right. I’ll see you after chapel,’ she said. ‘I’m late.’

  As she hastened down Chestergate to the chapel, Carrie found she was thinking continuously about Patrick Kennedy. He had an air, an aura, about him she’d never known on any man before and she wondered if she were a little afraid of him. It was probably because he was Roman Catholic, she decided. You never knew what went on in those places where they prayed to saints, fiddled with beads and lit candles. It was horrible thinking about it.

  She went as fast as she could. She could not go in late to the choir stalls. They’d all be whispering, all the women, and wanting to know what had kept her. That time Walter had sat next to her all the tongues had started wagging. She knew they had. And there hadn’t been an understanding or anything. Even if he’d spoken, she wasn’t sure that marriage was what she’d wanted. Father had never wanted her to get married; he’d told her so.

  She’d read all about marriage in those books – some she’d sent for and some the minister’s wife had lent her soon after Walter Stubbs had shown an interest. It had been a real eye-opener. She still couldn’t get over it – the minister’s wife having books like that, with coloured pictures of insides and men’s parts. You’d never think it. The minister’s wife was that prim and proper.

  Marriages, true marriages, one man and one woman joined for life in the sight of God, were made in heaven any road, so she’d missed her chance when Walter had been killed. All the same, she couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like – a man doing those things. Loving you.

  And what was she doing anyway, thinking about marriage and understandings when all he wanted, all Patrick Kennedy wanted, was to talk about back kitchens! As if she knew or cared about kitchens. They were just rooms with a tap, a sink, a cooking stove and a table. Perhaps he was going to put gas stoves in the posh houses they were building. That’d be it. He’d want to see how her gas stove worked.

  She got there in time and filed into the choir stalls after the others. She was the tallest so she stood at the back. But the service was slow. Everything seemed to be dragging along tonight. Alderman Cecil Ratcliffe – he had a big shoe shop on Mill Street – lay preacher, a bit of a know-all, had given the sermon. It had been on a text from Proverbs, ‘Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.’

  Someone else could have made more of that, an’ all. Someone with a bit of fire. Someone like her father. She liked good, rousing sermons where the preacher looked into your eyes, pointing his finger and thundering in a deep voice.

  Cecil Ratcliffe had a weak voice. He was tall and thin and stood with his back to the choir so that all she could see of him was the back of his narrow neck and his hands, white-knuckled, tense, on the edge of the pulpit.

  Anyway, she knew what tomorrow would bring forth for her. Just the same as every Monday and nothing to boast about. She was glad they didn’t go in for pomp and show at chapel, no processions or anything. As soon as the last hymn was over she’d slip out by the side door. She didn’t want to stand around outside, gossiping.

  At last. ‘Hymn number four hundred and twenty-two,’ Cecil Ratcliffe said in his considered, light tones, ‘“Blessed Assurance”.’

  Good. It was a short hymn and she liked the ones with a refrain. The organ wheezed for the introduction and they all stood. ‘Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine: O what a foretaste . . .’ Her mind went back to the afternoon. ‘Design the kitchens to suit the ladies!’ he’d said. Design them indeed! ‘Of glory divine . . .’

  She wondered if he’d be in the parlour still. He and Danny generally went for a walk after supper. ‘Heir of salvation, purchase of God’. He’d asked once or twice if she’d like a walk an’ all. ‘Born of the spirit, washed in his blood . . .’

  Being Irish he’d not see what that would mean to the folk who sat in their upstairs windows watching all that went on – if she went for a walk with a man.

  ‘This is my stor-ee . . .’ she sang.

  Courting couples went walking, down Mill Street and along the canal banks to the aqueduct – ‘Th’Accadoc’, the locals called it.

  ‘This is my song . . .’

  But she’d never been. ‘Praising my Saviour all the day long.’

  Chapter Two

  It was light outside and only half-past eight. Carrie went quickly back to the square.

  He opened the front door to her. Patrick Kennedy did. Her own front door. She’d tell him about that. She wouldn’t have her lodgers taking liberties. She was sick of it, the way he disconcerted her. He had a funny smell as well. People did, everyone had their own smell only his was more noticeable. Now her heart was going nineteen to the dozen again, making her choke for breath. She gave him a stern look. ‘Where’s Jane?’ she asked when the door was closed behind her.

  ‘In the parlour,’ he said, as bold as you like. ‘She’s copying a chapter of the Bible, like you said. Me brother’s in there too, reading.’

  Carrie opened the parlour door and saw Jane, little and childish where she sat at the window table, push a sheet of drawing paper inside her Bible hurriedly. ‘I’m copying out, Carrie,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to make you a cup of tea?’

  ‘No. Sit down. I’ll do it meself,’ Carrie told her. ‘But you should be in the living room or the kitchen. You know I keep this room for the lodgers.’ She glanced over at Danny Kennedy who promptly put down his book and leapt to his feet.

  ‘I’ll leave,’ he said.

  Carrie saw Jane blush with embarrassment. ‘Stay where you are,’ she said. ‘It’s not important. Don’t make a habit of it, that’s all.’

  She thought she’d hang her coat up and put a cardigan on – she’d gone chilly – before she made the tea but, when she turned into the hall, Patrick Kennedy was at the foot of the stairs, blocking her way. She’d have to brush against him if she wanted to get past –so she’d not go up.

  ‘Would you like to take a turn around the square with me, Miss Shrigley?’ he asked.

  Carrie looked sharply at him. ‘I can’t do that,’ she said, then all at once, not wanting him to see that she had put a different interpretation on his invitation from that which he’d meant, she reddened and turned away, making for the corridor and kitchen in her best coat.

  At the end of the corridor was a small living room that held a deal table, two upholstered armchairs and a cooking range, which she only lit in the winter. She took off her hat and coat and placed them over an armchair.

 
Beyond the living room was the wide and shallow kitchen, a tacked-on addition to the house. She filled the iron kettle at the sink, which was set at one end, and crossed the stone-flagged floor to put it on the gas stove at the other side. It was dark and cold. The walls hadn’t been whitewashed for as long as she could remember. She’d never been able to do it nor had enough money to pay anyone to do it for her. Above the gas stove, next to the matches, was a square tea-caddy and a large earthenware teapot.

  As soon as the kettle boiled, Carrie reached for the wooden tray, which was kept beside the stove, placed the filled teapot on it and carried it to the living room where she set it on the table.

  Patrick Kennedy was there, in her living room. There was a dining room for the lodgers next to the parlour. She drew in her breath sharply. ‘I’ve told you before. This part of the house is private,’ she said, all snippy, to show him.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you,’ he said. ‘Don’t be angry with me. Oh, Caroline Aurora! You’re too young to be acting like an old maid.’

  ‘How dare you!’ Carrie felt colour flood into her face. Anger and embarrassment joined to inflame her. ‘You’ve been following me about. Haven’t you?’ she demanded.

  He closed the door behind him and smiled widely, unconcerned at her outrage. ‘Carrie,’ he said in the low, musical way he had. ‘Have you no feelings?’

  Then his hands were on her shoulders, pressing her arms down against her sides. She had no idea what to do. He was in earnest. She saw that his eyes were full of desire. Suddenly she twisted under his hands, stepped back and struck him, hard across the side of the head.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ she shouted. ‘You leave my house. Go! Go!’

  Her left hand came up and caught him over the mouth, catching him off-balance, making him fall backwards, knocking the teapot as he stumbled. Then to Carrie’s horror the brown pot turned on its side, the lid clattered to the floor and boiling liquid poured down on to Patrick’s neck as he dropped to his knees.